


So It Goes, By and By

by orphan_account



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode: s06e04 Dreamland, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-15
Updated: 2015-08-15
Packaged: 2018-04-14 19:18:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4576632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An alternate universe where Mulder isn't body-swapped.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So It Goes, By and By

**Author's Note:**

> Vague references to sexual harassment in the work place and emotional abuse in Scully's past.

Scully was at a bar. She didn’t normally frequent bars but today she thought well why the hell not.

She didn’t know what to drink so she ordered a beer, just any beer. She played with the condensation as she stared at the glass. She played with the cross at her neck, skin flinching as her cold, wet fingers touched her skin.

A woman sat down beside her, ordered a glass of white wine, the bitter, dry kind that made your mouth water. Her eyes were rimmed with red. 

She’d been crying.

Scully wondered if her face would like that in the morning, when she finally went home. When she finally laid down in the dark and closed her eyes and thought about what the hell was going on. 

The woman must have felt her stare because she met her eyes without flinching. “What’s his name?”

“What do you mean?”

She played with the stem on her wine glass. “Mine was my husband. That Morris. That cheating—“ and she went off, and Scully nodded along with the rhythm of her words, mouth opening in time as the woman paused for breath to power a new launch of profane epithets to describe her husband.

She gulped her wine, turned back to Scully. Her voice was thin, like she’d ran herself out. Like she wanted to be angry some more but her heart was too weak for the weight of her rage. “So, what’s his name?”

“Mulder,” Scully said, finally taking a sip of her beer. It was bitter. 

“Boyfriend?”

Scully shook her head. She felt her mouth start to purse in that way—the way that he used to tease. Her visage of skepticism he used to call it but it wasn’t always that. “No. Not really. Friend. He was my partner in the FBI.” She shrugged her shoulders. But maybe it could be different. Maybe it would be different, if--

“Oh.” The woman’s hand was heavy on her shoulder. “Those are the worst. But then—“ she fiddled with the wedding ring still on her finger—“I don’t think there is such a thing as best case scenario.”

“I mean,” Scully said, “I’m probably overreacting. He was playing golf on his computer. He was calling me by my first name. He—“ she could feel the light tap of his hand as he had patted her and she hated it, she hated the shame of it simmering low in her belly. “He’s not acting like himself.”

The woman narrowed her eyes, like she knew there was something Scully wasn’t telling. But Scully looked away. She shook it off. Sometimes people had bad days and it wasn’t really their fault the way they handled it. 

Sometimes, they’d do something and you’d think, they’d never do that, but they did and then you’d understand that maybe you didn’t understand them as well as you thought you did and whose fault was that? But you know better now, you modify your behavior, and you adapt so it’ll be okay. 

That’s what Scully had told herself when she was a young girl. 

Sometimes, they behave that way because they’re not well. Maybe they’re sick in their body or their mind or their heart. But you deal with that. You learn to defuse. To anticipate what might cause them to turn on you like that and to stop it. 

That’s what Scully told herself as she gripped the handle of the steering wheel, going home after a long day. There was still Nevada sand in her boots.

Sometimes, it didn’t last very long. Sometimes just for a few minutes, if you were lucky. 

Mulder wouldn’t be so strange in the morning. He’d be more like himself. He just needed to sleep it off, and Scully thinks the same as she pours sand out of her boots and washes the grime off her and slides between her sheets, pulling her covers to her chin, staring wide-eyed, at the ceiling, willing for sleep to come.

It never did.

Mulder was playing golf on the computer when she got back in. Mulder was flirting with every girl that walked by. Mulder kept calling her by her first name.

“Hey, Dana.”

“What about some coffee, Dana?”

“Dana, did you see this—“ as he bent over, double, wheeze-laughing over some article about the best way to get a girl—

She didn’t finish reading the rest of the headline. She knew her cheeks were flushing in those dime spots, the tell-tale flush of red that told everyone who knew her that she was about to lose her temper—something she couldn’t afford to do. Not here. Not in this office.

He became a golden boy. Someone who never talked about government conspiracies or extra-terrestrials or UFOs. Someone who never asked her, Hey, Scully, you catch that rerun of Star Trek last night. What’d you think, huh, Scully? And she’d roll her eyes and they’d discuss it, him with his feet on his desk, cracking sunflower seeds, her leaning against the wall beside the I WANT TO BELIEVE POSTER (and sometimes, at night, when she’d look at it in the eerie office light, she did, she did want to believe—but only in the truth). 

Once, she hazarded to bring it up. “Did you see Star Trek last night, Mulder?”

He laughed in her face. “Oh no, Dana. You know what I was doing though—“ and he thrust his hips and she stared at the paper and willed her face into a slab of stone. 

It had been the one with the tribbles. Mulder used to love that one. It was the first one they had watched together, on an old tv that fit in the corner, on a slow night on those rare occasions where Mulder was taking a break.

Now, Mulder took lots of breaks. He took smoke breaks (and she almost missed the sunflower seed habit—almost). He took relationship breaks with all his new girlfriends. 

A break from the conspiracies and the search for the truth (and she could still hear him, the truth is out there, Scully, the truth will save us Scully, the truth, the truth, the truth).

A break from speaking about his sister.

When the bureau decided to split them up, to pair their talents elsewhere, Mulder strolled from the office with his hands in his pockets. 

He didn’t look back.

Scully went down to the basement. Most of the fire damage had been repaired, but she still smelled smoke.

She knew it wasn’t real, it was just her, remembering. She sank down into the chair behind the desk. It didn’t have Mulder’s name on it anymore, but that was okay. 

It would always be his. It would always be theirs. 

She looked up at the ceiling, spotless and clean. No pencils dangling, no pocked holes from when they fell back down. 

There were lots of reasons for a person to change, she thought to herself, her eyes drifting closed as her hands curled over the stiff leather. She missed the worn seat that Mulder had sat in, she missed the broken springs, she missed the way it had shifted to his weight.

Both Mulder and her had been through a lot. Stress and trauma changed people. That was to be expected.

But, she asked herself, did it change them into misogynistic assholes? 

Maybe it wasn’t even really Mulder. Maybe it was just—someone pretending to be Mulder. Somebody wearing in his face, possessing his body.

Maybe, it was just an X-file and if she looked hard enough, if she looked long enough, she would find the solution and she would fix it and Mulder would be the same that she remembered. They would be partners again. They would be friends, they would be--

Because the Mulder she knew, the Mulder she had come to respect and care for, wouldn’t act the way he acted. He wouldn’t have walked away from her without looking back—not after everything.

They can’t split us up, he’d said once before, disbelief in his voice as she walked away from him and he’d come running and he’d gripped her shoulder and she’d stopped and he’d said, he’d said all those things, and she’d been crying and they held each other and they’d almost, they’d almost kissed and—

That Mulder wouldn’t have walked away from her without even looking back.

Except that he had.

Except that he did. 

And she couldn’t respect Mulder who leered after women in the halls and who had forsaken every moral principle he’d ever held. She couldn’t care for Mulder when he disrespected her, when he called her Dana when he touched her when she didn’t want to be touched when he treated her like his assistant instead of his peer. 

Sometimes people changed. Sometimes, you had to know when to walk away (without looking back). 

Sometimes, you had to let them go. 

Because sometimes people changed, and there was no rhyme or reason to it—nothing but an ache that wouldn’t stop, nothing but that loss haunting the heart that would sometimes gape before your feet and you’d fall and fall and fall and you wondered if there had ever been a time that you were not sad. 

Sometimes, you just had to say goodbye.


End file.
